How to improve the efficiency of growing grain when there is a shortage of labor?

Recently, the author saw in the wheat field of Zhang Junbao, a major grain grower in the 11th Company of the 49 Regiment of the third Division of the Xinjiang production and Construction Corps, that with the roar of the harvester, ear swallowing, threshing, and loading were completed at one time, and the baler quickly beat the straw into a regular square stack.

Zhang Junbao said: "you no longer have to worry about not being able to hire labor to harvest 150 mu of wheat." In recent years, the regiment has trained a team of brokers, promoted mechanization and strengthened social services to solve the problem of agricultural employment. Today, these measures have also been innovated and popularized in other division groups, and agricultural efficiency has improved year by year.

In previous years, there was a "labor shortage" due to shortage of manpower and high wages.

It would be nice to hire someone for 300 yuan a day

Back in 2012, Wang Xianggui, an employee of the fourth company of the regiment, was not as relaxed as Zhang Junbao. That year, because he did not hire a harvester, 2/3 of 80 mu of wheat was hit by hail, resulting in little harvest in a hard season.

At that time, although nearly 230000 mu of land in the regiment realized mechanical farming to a certain extent, a lot of manpower was needed in crop management and harvest. But it is very difficult to hire seasonal workers. Wang Lizhi, deputy head in charge of agriculture, said: "the reason is that with the acceleration of social industrialization, the number of jobs in various places is increasing, and the channels for the diversion of social rich labor are increasing; coupled with the fact that the regiment farm is located in the remote south of Xinjiang, social development also lags behind relatively, social living conditions are getting better and better, and many migrant workers are reluctant to come. At that time, seeing that large tracts of land were poorly cultivated and poorly managed, output showed a downward trend."

Another real problem of labor shortage is rising wages. Before 2011, the regiment's seasonal wage was less than 100 yuan a day, but now the regiment's seasonal wage is about 250 yuan. Li Hui, an employee of the fifth company of the regiment, said: "when labor is needed during the harvest, it would be nice to be able to hire workers for 300 yuan. But apart from the cost of agricultural materials and wages, one mu of land can hardly earn much money. " Two years ago, some of the staff of the regiment gave up farming to find another way.

Now: "three-pronged approach" to solve the difficulties of hiring workers

-- raise the mechanization rate, cultivate good management brokers, and improve the level of agricultural socialized service.

In the past two years, the regiment has solved the problem of difficult employment and high wages by vigorously promoting agricultural mechanization, training labor brokers and creating a heart-binding environment for service guarantee, but also saved agricultural costs.

Raise the level of mechanization to solve the problem of labor shortage. In 2013, the regiment invested money to purchase 18 wheat harvesters, 60 planting and seeding machines of various types and 15 corn harvesters; in 2014, 10 cotton pickers and cotton loading moulding machines were purchased; and at the beginning of this year, 15 red jujube brush cleaning machines were purchased. Up to now, the regiment has more than 260 agricultural locomotives and agricultural machinery of all sizes. The introduction of machines reduces the amount of labor required to 80% a year.

Yang Yong, a worker of the 10th company of the regiment, said: "before there was no planting and sowing machine and cotton picker, my 60 mu of cotton needed to employ at least 20 people to be busy. Each person was calculated at 80 yuan a day, and after working for more than 50 days, more than 80,000 yuan was gone, deducting agricultural materials and other costs. At that time, the annual income was only more than 30,000 yuan. After basically realizing mechanization, it is enough to hire five or six people to be busy at the most tense time. "

Train labor brokers to invigorate labor resources. Although the regiment has a large number of modern agricultural machinery and tools, it still needs a lot of manpower in crop management, such as seedling, topping, pruning, sprouting, bagging, and so on. In order to hire workers in time to rush for seed and harvest, the regiment trained six labor brokers. At ordinary times, brokers contact and register the rich labor force of the regiment and the surrounding counties and cities, establish age, work direction, skills and other basic information files, and sign employment contracts. Once the contractor of the regiment farm needs to hire workers, as long as the number is told, the broker will immediately coordinate the allocation, and manage the employees and coordinate the settlement of contradictions and disputes.

Maiti Tusun, a farmer in Bachu County, who borders the regiment, said: "in the past, he either finished his work at home or asked everywhere where there was work to do, but last year, after registering with the agent of the 49 regiment, Nur Maiti Sdick, he would call as soon as he had a job, so he didn't have to look for work any more. He would take the money immediately after he had finished it. I was very relieved to work here."

Do a good job in service guarantee and create an environment to tie the heart and retain people. The regiment mobilized growers to retain employees with affection, and once employers and employees established a deep relationship, they basically formed a long-term cooperative relationship. Three years ago, Crimus Rozi, who lived in Shule County and collected flowers at Zhang Weiqiang's family in the seventh company of the regiment, came to his house every year to collect flowers. Crimel Rozi said that the boss's family was very kind to him. The family had no money to advance his wages, and he didn't have to pay for renting a house. The boss also paid for the water and electricity, and he bought a few bunches of roast mutton from time to time, but his wages were not a penny, so he has been working for Zhang Weiqiang. At the same time, it also provides skills training for migrant workers, such as pruning jujube trees, wiping buds and picking hearts, and other jobs that require certain skills. the regiment insists on taking up posts after training for new workers and pays wages during the training period.

In the future: the dismissal of workers still needs policy support.

-- improving the agricultural labor market, increasing skills training and implementing industrial classification subsidies to offset rising costs

At present, with the rapid development of science and technology, many advanced agricultural machinery have been put into use, which has reduced the labor force to a certain extent, but there are still many jobs that require a lot of labor, such as apple bagging, cotton topping, jujube tree pruning and sprouting, and other jobs can only be done manually, which requires not only employees, but also certain technical content.

"Today, in order to speed up the development of modern large-scale agriculture, in order to solve the seasonal labor shortage in agriculture, we still need to improve and improve the agricultural labor market, the improvement of the quality of labor workers, and the expansion of characteristic agricultural services, all of which are inseparable from the support of national policies." Zheng Shengxue, secretary of the party committee of the regiment, said.

Skill training is the key to improve the quality of employees. Chen Yong, head of the production section of the regiment, said: "according to the needs of agricultural development, there should be special institutions to train employees according to differences in age, culture, and gender. Young people learn the operation of agricultural machinery, and older people study agricultural management." women learn pruning, seedling fixing, and so on. "

Rising labor costs have also reduced some of the profit margins of agricultural growers. "resolving the rise in labor costs not only needs to be regulated by the market, but also needs to introduce a classified subsidy policy for agriculture to subsidize those labor-intensive agricultural industries to maintain a good momentum of development and benefit growers." Li Dafu, a big grower, said.

"A large labor gap" forced mechanized rice planting to expand the scale of Suibin Farm in Heilongjiang Province.

Rice farmers look forward to increasing subsidies for the renewal of agricultural machinery

Nowadays, "it is difficult and expensive to hire workers" has become a major "bottleneck" restricting the improvement of agricultural economic benefits. Compared with dry land, paddy field production has the greatest demand for labor.

Suibin Farm in Heilongjiang Reclamation area is a paddy field, with a rice planting area of 537000 mu. Zhang Xinmin, head of the farm labor employment service center, said: "due to the relative concentration of labor demand in rice production, the demand is the largest in the spring ploughing production period, and there is a certain shortage. However, for the whole year, the demand for migrant workers is declining, but the cost of employment is on the rise. "